For decades, television viewers have been able to record programming for later viewing using videotape and, more recently, digital video recording (DVR) technology. This practice of “time-shifting” has long been recognized as permissible even for content subject to copyright.
For the convenience of cable television subscribers, DVR technology has recently become available on set-top boxes (STBs) using recordable mass-storage media (e.g., a hard drive) deployed within the STB. This approach, while consistent with the traditional “client-side” arrangement in which the storage device is co-located with the user's television set, is nonetheless cumbersome and expensive as it requires the distribution of the storage equipment to the subscriber base. While co-location may have been unavoidable in the days before secure, high-bandwidth telecommunications, today—particularly in digital-television environments—timely retrieval no longer requires proximity to the storage device. Accordingly, the location of the stored content is arbitrary.
Challenges facing the cable operators (commonly referred to as Multi-System Operators, or “MSOs”) are not purely technical, however. Content owners have reluctantly acknowledged court rulings that established the principle that copies of telecast content made by a consumer for his own viewing is “fair use” of such content. Content owners have, however, attempted to limit the applicability of such rulings, suggesting that copies made and stored using equipment located outside the consumer's home (e.g., on the premises of an MSO) are in fact “made by” the MSO and therefore do not fall within the scope of such holdings. If accurate, the MSO would require additional licenses of the content, which would in turn significantly increase the costs of proving such a service.
A need therefore exists to facilitate content storage at a location that is optimal from a system-wide perspective, while permitting users to record television programming and to play back such recordings in a manner substantially similar to and with functionality commonly associated with conventional client-side recording devices, while operating within the legal constraints of copyright law.